i'm glad that you acknowledge that your experience isn't representative (at all!!!) batsgirl! ;o) i could go on about how difficult it is to get people to acknowledge you're ill and not just a work-shy malingerer when your health problems are mental rather than physical, or about how hard it is to access mental health services and get adequate support from them, in particular accessing talking therapies like counselling, about how the benefits system is a trap that makes it too risky for people to give part-time work a go to see if it they can cope with it, or about how difficult it is to get an employer to take you on in the first place when you have a history of mental health problems .... i could, but i won't ;o) as for the woman who said you were "so lucky" to be getting IB and DLA - i doubt very much she meant that you were "lucky" to be disabled to the extent that you were receiving that level of benefits, more that you were lucky to have some form of financial stability! (which she probably didn't have as most of the questions on a dla form are geared towards physical disability like when my partner explained to his mum that because i have a disabled person's railcard he could get a discounted fare if he travelled with me, his mum said "oh, that's good" - she didn't mean it's good that i'm disabled ffs!!! not *everyone* is by nature an insensitive idiot, some people just have a poor tact-filter between mouth and brain ...